Random thoughts from a Brit in the North West. Sometimes serious, sometimes not. Quite often curmudgeonly.

Thursday, September 19, 2013

Banks; Owls; Airports; Fatal driving; Bureaucracy; and Bull baiting;

There
was a time - and it feels like only yesterday - when Pontevedra's
bank branches seemed as numerous as its beggars, with all of the big
names - and some of the smaller ones - competing to open a (people
heavy) place on every street. My, how things things have changed.
Those banks that have survived - usually by merging - are now closing
branches and laying off staff at an almost equal pace. Or simply
'letting go' of half their employees. The latter has been Citibank's
strategy so far but my own guess is this, too, will close ere long.

In
contrast, more and more owls are appearing in the city's cafés. But,
when you see pigeons gaily pecking below them, you do wonder whether
this stampede to buy one doesn't owe more to thoughtless imitation - or perhaps
desperation - than to research. Anyway, I shall spare you another
foto, in the interests of the ochlophobes such as Alfie Mittington
among you. Incidentally, my spell check gave me homophobes as
a replacement for ochlophobes.

While
Galicia's 3 small international airports compete for declining
passenger numbers, Oporto's has seen a record number of flights and
passengers over the summer. There's a lesson in this somewhere but no
one in Galicia seems to be able to find it.

Talking of
tourism . . . The devil, as ever, is in the details. Numbers of
visitors may be up but the per capita spend is down. For our 3
airports the bad news is that very few people arrived here by plane in July and August,
preferring cars, buses, bikes or even, in the case of pilgrims en
route to Santiago, their feet.

Galicia
seems to suffer an alarming number of people - nearly always men -
who die beneath their overturned tractors. I'm guessing this is
because it's a hilly region and these men are often working on
slopes. What accounts for the high number of people who drive off the
quays into the sea, I don't know. Likewise the appreciable number of
drivers who don't seem to realise it's dark.

I read
yesterday that, while evolution continues, the pace is so slow we
won't see any impact on we humans during our lifetime. I'm not so
sure; I don't think it'll be long before Spain's budding bureaucrats
are born with a stapler in their hands.

Which
reminds me . . . My visitors went yesterday to a supermarket in
town. Meeting up, they asked me why they'd been asked to both give
their PIN and to sign a copy of the credit card chit. What on earth
was I supposed to say? No bloody idea?

The latest
bit of Spanglish: Our mayor - talking of the suspension of
the works aimed at covering up an archeological site with sand - has
assured us that these are now en standby. Or suspended, I guess.

There's
an annual bull fiesta down near Tordesillas which consists of
releasing a bull in the town, driving it across a bridge into the
countryside and then repeatedly stabbing/lancing it to death. I doubt even aficionados of the corridas find much to admire in this
and it really should be stopped. This year, the event was disrupted
by numerous protesters, whom the local mayor accused of 'endangering
life'. But not the bull's, of course. As it happened, the only person
seriously injured was a journalist who got too close with his camera
and was gored in the thigh.

Finally . .
. I frequently see people wearing T-shirts with odd English on the
front of them. But yesterday's took the biscuit - a young lady with
the large word SICK across her chest. But I cheered up when I later
saw another young lady wearing a pullover whose entire front was the
Union Jack.

Colin, I believe that you and Alfie are “oclophobes” and not “ochlophobes”. The first being a fear of owls and the second being a fear of crowds – or perhaps you both have a fear of being invaded by a crowd of owls….. On reflection about your “love – hate” relationship toward the bird, I think that you are both closet owl enthusiasts, and like the bird, you both reign from dusk to dawn.

And as for the evolution of the bureaucrats, forefinger and thumb will become the stapler with the wrist of the other arm becoming their telephone!!

Tis a mounting mystery! For some strange reason, which surely has to do with certain suspect erotic preferences of Herr S Freud, there IS no true word for a Fear of Owls. See this here Yahoo Dear Abby: